The Gospel in Genesis

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.

You can also find us on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts. Please enjoy the.

Sermon. Well, it was in A .D. 85 that a little boy was born in the ancient city of Sinope, in the Roman province of Pontus, in what is now modern-day Turkey. And born to a godly father who served as a leader in one of the local churches, this boy came to be called Marcian, or as it means translated, Little Mark.

And in many respects, he was a very special young man, this Marcian. He was hardworking, he was intelligent, he was ambitious, he was capable. And as a result, it was not long after he grew from boyhood to manhood that he amassed a fairly significant fortune for himself.

And by the time he reached middle age, Marcian opted to move. He moved from his hometown to the city of Rome. And finding himself in Rome, he joined the church in Rome. And he demonstrated not only his great fortune, but his great generosity.

History tells us that Marcian donated the equivalent of 100 years wages to the church, 200 ,000 sesterces. And in addition to that generosity, he brought with him his intelligence. And another thing that he brought, as has been described by one church historian, was his unbending convictions.

And one of the convictions was this. Having been influenced by a first century heresy known as Gnosticism, we've heard a lot about Gnosticism when we were in 1st John. No doubt, not only John, but Paul and others warned about the coming of Gnosticism.

But having been enamored with Gnosticism, it influenced him to draw a bold line between the Old Testament and the New Testament. He saw a qualitative difference between the Old and the New. And in fact, Marcian suggested, because of his views, that the Old Testament should be discarded.

He said that the Old Testament should be discarded because the God of the Old Testament was a contemptible and capricious demi-urge. And he would go so far as to say that the Old Testament was not just to be discarded, but it was the antithesis of the New Testament.

That the Old Testament's message, or maybe if I start with the New Testament, the New Testament's message was one of love and of grace and of compassion. And that was altogether incompatible with the Old Testament and its emphasis, as he saw it, on wrath and on God's justice and on the merciless and harsh nature of God.

And so then, the Hebrew scriptures were to be cast aside, as it were. And as we might hope, I'm gonna struggle with this all afternoon, so I'm gonna adjust it now. As we might hope, thankfully, the church in Rome quickly dealt with Marcian.

They returned, to their credit, they returned the 200 ,000 sesterces that he had donated a few years earlier. And when he would not recanted his views, they excommunicated him. But what ended up happening, though they dealt with that issue in Rome, it would forever leave a scar on the history of the church.

Because what Marcian did, was he just then went from city to city to city, heralding his erroneous views on scripture. And in the process, made many disciples going from place to place to place. So that one early church father, a man named Tertullian, said that Marcian planting churches was like wasps making nests.

He was one of the most successful, if we can use that term, successful heretics in the history of the church. And remarkably, despite all of this, he was so successful, his teachings were so pervasive, that he managed to be opposed by almost every early church father in both the Greek and Latin speaking world.

Which at that day, in that day, was it was a significant feat. Before the advent of the internet, before podcasts, before books could be published and sent around the Empire. Polycarp, a disciple of John the Apostle, gave him a famous nickname.

I pray this would never be a nickname that any of us would receive. He called Marcian, the firstborn of Satan. And Marcian really was, was that. He shared his damning error across the Empire, so that many Christians threw us, threw away, cast aside what was the Old Testament and eventually adopted some form of a partial New Testament canon.

Bits and pieces of Luke and some of the letters of the Apostle Paul. All the rest was rubbish to them. And as I account, or as I share this account, I wish that we could look at this as a cautionary tale from the distant annals of church history.

Where we might hear about Marcian and, and learn of some distant point where he was finally defeated and, and the, the error itself dissipated. But we cannot. The error of Marcian is still alive and well in the church today.

When you think about this, every time you hear a person compare the graciousness of the New Testament with the austerity of the Old Testament, Marcian still speaks. Every time prominent church leaders, and I'll name names like Andy Stanley, tell us that we need to unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament.

That the success of Marcian's efforts are proved true. Or to bring it just a bit closer to home, every time we harbor ideas that, that view the Old Testament as somehow being less relevant than the New Testament.

Or, or not being fully aligned with the message of the gospel. Every time we do that, we invite a little bit of Marcian to live in our hearts with us. And, and how often that happens. That we memorize the New Testament.

Not just because we love it, but we, we memorize the New Testament because we love it more than the Old Testament. We prioritize it more than, the New more than the Old. And I fear that many Christians today live completely aloof to the fact that they are actually neo-Marcionites.

Meaning new Marcionites, who think that there is an incongruency between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Therefore, prioritizing the new at the expense of the old. And this is what I want to explore in our time together today in Genesis 1 through 11.

Now that we've concluded our study in 1st Timothy, we're again returning to the study of Genesis. And if you were with us in, in the fall of 2024, maybe just by a show of hands, who was here with us in the fall of 2024?

Okay. And, and who, who hasn't heard me preach Genesis at all? If I just ask by a show of hands. Praise the Lord. He's, he's building his church. So if you were here with us in the fall of 2024, you'll know that we looked over some of these things.

But, but no doubt it's been a year and a half since we last considered some of these texts. And if you have not been with us through any or most of Genesis, then, then this is really helpful that we get the foundation right.

And so what we'll do today is a review sermon of sorts on Genesis 1 through 11. And as we do this, I want to combat that the Neo-Marcionite view that might live inside of you, but by showing you this, that when we rightly understand the message of Genesis, one of the, if not the earliest book in the Bible, what we find is a unified message that fits perfectly with the New Testament.

And as we look at these 11 chapters today, not only do we find a rock solid foundation for the rest of Genesis, as we make our way into chapter 12 next week and beyond, not only do we find a rock solid foundation for all of the Old Testament, but I want you to see that when we look at Genesis 1 through 11, we actually see a crystal clear picture of the gospel.

That we see the gospel in technicolor in the book of Genesis without ever naming the name of Jesus, but we will see Jesus. I hope we see Jesus. And so we're going to look together at Genesis 1 through 11.

I think it's helpful as we, as we look at it, I'm going to give us a brief introduction, just a layout of the land before we get into it. And then we're looking at 11 chapters. It's not going to be an 11 point sermon, but I'm going to take us through five key themes that we see in Genesis again and again and again.

I want to show you that. And so Genesis, if you're looking at a Genesis chapter one, right at the top, you see that, that word Genesis. Where do we get that word from? Now, if we, if we look in scripture, we can, we can actually find the, the word that informs the title Genesis.

If we go to Genesis chapter two and verse four, and what we see is that the title Genesis actually comes from the Septuagint, that is the Greek translation of the old Testament. And in Genesis chapter two and verse four, we read, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth.

And that word Genesis in the Greek Septuagint is the word Genesis. And you can hear the similarities, Genesis and Genesis. And what we find is that Genesis is exactly that. It summarizes not only the creation of the world, but, but the generations of the first peoples who lived on the face of this planet.

And we can divide the book of Genesis really into a two-part story. That Genesis one through 11 deals with what we would call primeval history. That is the history of the earliest periods in the world's history.

So primeval history, one through 11, and then 12 through 50 dealing with patriarchal history. And patriarchal history tells us the story of the patriarchs, men like Abram and Isaac and Jacob and, and their descendants.

And this two-part story that we find in the book of Genesis is then again, wrapped up in a number of other events that take place. And there are actually 11 different places in the book of Genesis that, that form pillars or milestones throughout the book.

You might remember a year and a half ago, I introduced you to the idea of toledotes. And in the book of Genesis, we find 11 different times this expression, ele toledotes, which means in the generations of.

And so this begins to punctuate the book of Genesis as we go along. And I want to show you some of them. I'll list them all in case you're a note taker and you want them, but, but otherwise I'll just show us a few.

But in Genesis chapter two and verse four, we read, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth. So we, we, we see that the generations as it were of the created world. In Genesis chapter five and verse one, what do we read there?

But these are the generations of Adam. In chapter six and verse nine, ele toledote, these are the generations of Noah. In chapter 10 and verse one, these are the generations of the sons of Noah. In 11 and verse 10, these are the generations of Shem.

And then 11, 27, Terah, the father of Abram. And then 25, 12, Ishmael. 25, 19, Isaac. 36, 1. And then again in verse nine, Esau. And then finally in Genesis 37, 2, ele toledote, these are the generations of Jacob and of his sons, the 12 tribes of Israel.

If you, if you want all of those, I can give them after if you couldn't keep up. But, but we find here these 11 key points in this two-part story that, that lay out the book of Genesis for us. And as we deal with chapters one through 11, and deal with what I see as the five key themes of these chapters, I want to take us to the first theme.

And that one we find right back in Genesis chapter one and verse one. And we'll look at Genesis verses one and two. And the first theme that we find, I think the first theme that we would expect to find is this.

It is God. Genesis one and two. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

As Moses begins, and Moses is the, the author of this book. There are different people that will argue for theories like the JDP theory and others. But, but as Moses begins this book, he takes us to the, the star of the book, to, to the, the subject of the book, the, the main character of the book.

And that of course is the eternal creator of all things, God. But he does something truly fascinating. And maybe some of you remember me talking about this. Maybe some of you have never heard this before, but if we were to look at Genesis chapter one and verse one in the original Hebrew, it's remarkable that he introduces us to God Elohim.

But Elohim does not come to us in the singular, as we might expect. Elohim comes to us in the plural. And does anyone remember what we called that plural? The plural of, the plural of majesty, or what's sometimes called the, the royal we.

And it is truly remarkable what Moses is after. We don't know with, with a hundred percent certainty exactly what he's going for, but I think that we have a good idea based on, on the larger context and, and what, what scholars have looked at in their study of Genesis.

And, and I want to point out two reasons why I think Moses uses the royal we, or the plural of majesty, as he speaks about God Elohim. In the beginning, gods created the heavens and the earth. In the Hebrew mind, to use the plural of majesty conveyed the fullness of God's deity.

In a time when, when there were many other gods, we have to remember Moses is writing this. It's, it's not Noah's firsthand account, right? When Noah came in the garden, before there was evil, there was only one God.

But as, but as Moses now recounts this, he's contending with, with Egyptian gods, and Canaanite gods, and Akkadian gods, and all of these other gods. And what, what Moses is seeking to do is this, that he's seeking to establish that the God of the Bible, the God of Genesis 1 -1, is not just God, as in a common God, but that he is God.

That he is God of very gods. That, that the plural in the Hebrew here seeks to capture the essence of God's peerless majesty. That, that if your God is one-dimensional, my God is three-dimensional. He is four-dimensional.

He is five-dimensional. He stands alone in the hierarchy of the cosmos with no person and no thing as his equal. And this should, as we read it, when we understand that we have here the plural of majesty, it has been conveyed in such a way so that when we read, in the beginning, God, we would be stopped.

Our mouths would be silenced, and we would be made to ascribe all glory to this God. He's not just some regional deity. He's not just a household deity. He is God of very gods. What a remarkable thing, that we should be introduced to this God.

And as scholars have looked at this, a second reason has been put forward for why we, we see the plural of majesty here. In the words of one commentator, it indicates, I quote, the plural nature of God.

That God is one. We must make no mistake about that. That God is one, but God is also three distinct persons. The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So that in the opening line, this opening line of the Bible, we learn that our God stands alone.

He is set apart. He is one God, and yet there is a complexity about him that can only be described in the plural. And what we find as the creation account unfolds, is that the glory of this God and the attributes of this God are unveiled in a wonderful way.

There is a sequence to God's creative works in chapter one. We're not going to look at them very closely, but it's actually a seven-step or seven-part formula that God uses as he speaks the world into existence.

So we can look at this just for a moment in Genesis 1 and verse 3, where we read, and God said, let there be light, and there was light. What we see here is that there is an announcement where, where God said at the beginning of each creative day, there's a command, let there be.

There's the fulfillment, it was so. There's the execution, the earth brought forth, whatever it is. There's the approval that God saw it, and it was good. There's the subsequent word where God labels it, and God called the light day.

And then there's the day number, the first day. And in every instance where, where we see God's creative works, it follows this, this orderly account. And the, the use of this, of this expression, God said, appears 10 different times in this first chapter.

And that in and of itself is remarkable. You know, I was thinking about it just today, that, that I could take you, I could place you, let's just suspend our imaginations for a moment, in a vacuum. It's just you in a white room.

It's a, it's a vacuum. You have air, you can breathe, that's a miracle, but, but you can breathe. But alas, apart from that, you have nothing. And I'll tell you this, if it was within my power, I could say, I give you 10 ,000 years, produce for me a grain of sand.

Just nothing fancy. It doesn't have to be shiny, nothing special, but just give me one grain of sand. You would be there for 10 ,000 years, and I would come back 10 ,000 years later, and I would find an insane man or woman.

You could say, I tried this, I tried this, I used this, I tried to collect the water in the room, I tried whatever it could be. Of course, it's a vacuum, there's nothing there. And you would say, I have nothing.

Did I, did I not ask for just one grain of sand? Have you ever thought about that? When you walk on a beach, you know, we take these things for granted, but to walk on a beach and to think of all of the grains of sand under your feet, right?

All the grains of sand that get stuck in your shoes when you put your shoes on at the end of the day, and they, they irritate you as they sit there at the bottom of your shoes. You could not create one of those grains if I gave you 10 ,000 years to do it.

And here what we see is that God creates the world ex nihilo, out of nothing, but by his powerful word alone. We can read Genesis 1, we go, I'm familiar with the creation account, but read Genesis 1 again, that God created everything.

There was not anything made that has been made that God has not made. And he made it all by a word. That is a remarkable thing. The Bible speaks here to God's unity, that, that he is one, there is one Elohim, he's in a category all his own.

And in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. We see this in the Hebrew Shema, in Hebrews, sorry, in first, sorry, Deuteronomy, there it is. Deuteronomy 6, 4, where we read, hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

What we see as well, it's assumed, but we see it that in the beginning, God created, meaning that in the beginning, God not only created, but in the beginning, God existed. And so we see the, the attribute of what we would call a seity.

It's from the, the Latin phrase, a se, which means from himself. You know what's remarkable is you and I are dependent upon absolutely everything. If God were to, to shift the, the, the orientation of the earth on its axis by two degrees, we would all be dead in six months.

We're, we're dependent upon water. We're dependent upon air. We're dependent upon food. We're dependent on love. We're dependent on everything. And God is dependent on nothing. He is a se. He possesses absolute a seity, self-existent.

He is perfect. Acts 17 says, does, he does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands. You know, when we glorify God, we don't add to his glory. We just magnify the glory he already possesses.

We see the omnipresence of God, that he was hovering over the faces, the face of the deep, that he is in all places at all times. I remember I used to walk down a tunnel from the, it was an LRT tunnel from the Edmonton remand center along to the Edmonton courthouse when I worked there.

And I remember I would read Psalm 139. You'd be underground. I knew that 104th Avenue was above me, but I couldn't hear it. I couldn't hear anything. It was just, it was just artificial light in this deep tunnel.

And I remember walking there, reading Psalm 139, verse seven, where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there, your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. And we see that God is everywhere. He cannot be escaped.

We see his eternality, that there was a time when this world was not, there was a time when everything was not, and yet God has always been. We see his sovereignty and his omnipotence, that he can create the planets, the cosmos with a word.

We can look deeper and see the spirituality of God, the wisdom of God, the knowledge of God, the goodness of God, the freedom of God, most certainly the glory of God. And such knowledge, you know, we get so used to living in this world, just interacting with the things that we see.

But to think that such a God exists now, that he made us, that he sustains us, that he is here with us, that there's not going to be a day when we can escape this God, for good or for bad. Such knowledge should be too wonderful for us.

It should bring us to our knees in humble adoration before the author of life. It is enough to stop our boastful mouths before the almighty maker of heaven and earth. Such a God cannot be contained. He cannot be controlled.

He cannot be molded into our likeness. He cannot conform to our sensibilities. We must simply stand before him and acknowledge that he is, that this is our God. And so what it means then to grasp Genesis chapter one, Genesis chapters one and two, is that when we understand these chapters, then we will be taken captive by the view of the magnificent all-surpassing power of this God.

Everything in his word and everything in his world was designed to make us stop and behold him. I'm not saying that just because that was our conference title last week. I mean that, that everything that he has put into this world was to make us stop and to see him, to worship him, to praise him.

I think of the story of Martin Luther, right? We all love the story, the stories of Martin Luther, some of them more than others. But there's a story about Luther that when his eyes were open to the gospel, God not only opened his eyes to see and understand the idea of a righteousness that is imputed by faith, but that God opened Luther's eyes to see the world that he created.

So that people would find Luther doing the most fascinating things. He would be there just looking in nature, observing. And he would observe the birds and the leaves and the flowers and the common gifts of God.

One time he was observed just marveling at a plate of fruit that God would give a plate filled with such bounty. And one day he wrote this. He said, a man could make one rose, holding a rose, I should say.

He was holding a rose. He said, a man who could make one rose like this would be accounted most wonderful. Isn't it true? You know, if I asked you, don't make a grain of sand, just make one rose. He said, a man who could make one rose would be accounted most wonderful.

And God scatters countless such flowers around us, but the very infinity of his gifts blinds us to them. That we are surrounded by so much goodness in God's creation that we grow blind to it. On your way home today, drive past the trees as they're just beginning to bud and the leaves are popping out of the branches and just marvel for a moment that God created colors.

Why? So that we would see them and glorify him. Martin Lloyd Jones once said, God's power not only surpasses our power of expression, it surpasses our power of comprehension. Take all the dictionaries of the world, exhaust all the vocabularies.

And when you have added them all together, you have still not begun to describe the greatness of God's power. It made me think that all of us, when we think about who God is, what he has made, how he has revealed himself, that we should all be hymn writers and scribes by trade so that we can just write the praises of God forever.

And it will take us forever to praise him. That's why eternity is eternity. Because we're gonna need every day, every hour of every day for the rest of our redeemed lives to glorify him. Now we'll look at the next theme.

And that is the theme of man. In Genesis 1 26, this is what we read. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. That's interesting, the plural, right? After our image, our likeness.

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Verse 27. So God created man in his image, in the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them.

So the second theme, we have God, now we have man. In verse 26, what do we find? We find our. Now sometimes we look at this and we go, okay, well, our referring to God, we might think of that in a triune thing, the Jehovah's Witnesses will come and they'll say, no, no, no, it's not, it's God saying our, let us like angels and other celestial beings, other created beings, let us make man in our image.

But this is remarkable. What do we see in verse 126? In the image of God, and again, the plural of majesty. So that God in the plural says, let us make man in our image, it only fits. And so we have God then making man in his image.

And a question that I want you to ask rhetorically in your mind or answer rhetorically in your mind is this, what does it mean that we have been made in the image of God? We talk about it all the time.

Well, man was made in the image of God, he's an image bearer of God, but what does it mean? If you were to, if I were to put you through a classroom of kindergarten age children, you know, I'm trying to put you in a bunch of difficult situations today, right?

Vacuums with sand. Now I'm going to put you in a room full of children and just say, you don't have to explain too much, just tell them what it means to be made in the image of God, just really simply.

What does it mean? I think it's interesting. I want you to stop and think about this for a moment that we talk about things so often, but we don't actually always understand exactly what it is that we're talking about.

What does it mean that we've created in the image and likeness of God? If you go to prosperity preachers, they'll tell you their idea that we're all little gods, right? And we can be in our private jets and we're flying above the clouds and we look down and we see a tornado and we say, you know, and we declare because they don't ask God, they just declare because they are little gods.

I declare that that tornado, you know, be swallowed up into the clouds, right? They would teach that we are all little gods and that God ultimately in their theology is just a means to an end, that we become the gods of our own story.

It's our comfort, it's our health, it's our wealth that we are after. That is not what it means to be made in the image of God. If we were to go to a secular humanist and ask them, what does it mean to be made in the image and likeness of God?

Well, the prosperity gospel preacher says everything, and the secular humanist will say, well, it means nothing. They would tell you, you are not qualitatively different from a common mayfly that is born, breeds, and dies all in the same day.

That you and that mayfly, that there is nothing qualitatively different about you. Is that true? What does it mean that we are made in the image and likeness of God? The early church fathers would look at it and they would say, well, we should separate the image and likeness.

And some of them, Augustine, for instance, gathered this idea that, well, we kind of reflect the triune nature of God in the way that we exist. I don't think that they were exactly onto the, I guess, the right line of thinking.

But I think that John Calvin captures it very nicely. John Calvin says this, he says, to me, made in the image of God, he says, this is the highest honor with which God has dignified us. Man is, among other creatures, a certain preeminent specimen of divine wisdom, justice, and goodness.

That he may be like God, or rather, or may represent the image of God. And I agree with where Calvin goes as he speaks about this, that image and likeness are just, we're looking at the same thing from two different perspectives.

And I want you to see it because in Genesis 1, 26, we see, let us make man in our image after our likeness. And then he collapses it, he consolidates it in verse 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him.

And this means then that we as image bearers of God have been made like God for the purpose of representing God. That's key, like God to represent God. And it speaks to three things that I want to highlight.

It speaks to our identity, it speaks to our duty, and it speaks to our purpose. As it relates to our identity, it is a remarkable thing that we have been made image bearers of God. Joel Beakey and Paul Smalley, they write this, they say, nothing could exalt man more than bearing the image of God.

The value of all things lies in their manifestation of the glory of God. And God has chosen to concentrate his revealed glory in the human race. That God's glory is seen, at least in a personal way, through our existence as his image bearers.

I'll explain a little bit more of what that means in a moment, but I want to talk about just the implications. Of all creatures, God chose to reveal his glory most fully in man. This means that human life is uniquely valuable.

There are no other image bearers on this planet except for human beings, except for men and women. When a little boy or a little girl is conceived in the womb, he or she is not an insignificant mayfly.

They are not primates. They're not even like one of the most beautiful or rare animals on the face of the earth. In human beings, we find creatures in whom the embodied manifestation of the glory of God is revealed.

The value of a single human soul outweighs all other resources, all wealth, all other creatures, all other stuff of this world. That's why the Lord Jesus said in Mark chapter eight, what is it, prophet man, to gain the whole world and lose your soul?

It's remarkable. I can take you to the North Saskatchewan River, and we can catch a fish, a sturgeon in the river, and take it home, and the fish and wildlife, they will find us, and they will charge us a hundred thousand for it.

But then I can take you downtown to the abortion mill, and we can kill the baby in your womb, and everybody will cheer. This is the water that we swim in. This is the air that we breathe. Brother and sister, of all the creatures in this world you could have been, God made you an image bearer of God, and he made all men and women to your right and to your left image bearers of God, and this has tremendous consequence.

Have you ever thought that the very attack on human life is in itself an attack on God because we bear his image in the world? That when we kill our sick and infirm, that when we kill our infants, when we put people to death like we do stray dogs, it's not just an attack on humanity, it's an attack on God displayed in humanity.

That's why the name of Jesus is taken in vain and not the name of Allah. That's why we celebrate when we take the life of humans, because it's an affront to God. But I want to talk about something else.

It also speaks to our duty that because we have been made in the likeness of God, we are image bearers and vice regents under God, and we are under God, but we are over everything else in the cosmos. Hermann Bavink says this.

He says, the entire world is the revelation of God, a mirror of his attributes and perfections. Every creature in its own way and degree is the embodiment of a divine thought, but among creatures, only man is the image of God, God's highest and richest revelation, and consequently the head and crown of the whole creation.

And this means that man has been given rightly the responsibility to exercise dominion over the earth. We see that in Genesis 1 .28. We see it again in Genesis 2 .15, that man is to work and keep in the garden.

And that garden actually, I'm not going to be able to chase this money trail too long, but that garden is actually the first temple of God on the earth. That's the place where God and man meet together.

And so here we have this picture of man created in the likeness of God and here to come into the holy holies of God and to dwell with him. The Jews at Qumran, they called Eden the temple of Adam. Other Jews referred to it as the, where is it?

The holy of holies and the dwelling place of the Lord. Ezekiel 28 calls the garden of Eden, the garden of God, the holy mountain of God and the sanctuary that we were made to live as an image of God and as servants of God to work and to keep.

But it also speaks to our purpose. Then when it says, if we come back to Genesis 1 .26, let us make man in our image. That word image is the Hebrew word Salem, which means statue or idol. And at its best, it communicates that when we are at our best, we communicate to all creation what God is actually like.

That we were meant to be like little idols walking around the world, showing people what God is actually like. Joel to quote him again. He says, men make inanimate idols to image their false gods, but the true God makes people to be his image bearers.

They go on and then he goes on. Man is created in the image and likeness of God to make God known. The Lord designed human beings to be limited, visible, earthly creatures that resemble God for his glory.